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CVG is running an interview with Kevin Cloud, executive producer at id, and Eric Biessman, who leads Raven Software's programmers and artists, about the upcoming installment to the Wolfenstein series. They provide some detail about what kind of weapons will be available, what those crazy Nazis are up to this time, and BJ Blazkowicz's new ability to "shroud" himself.
"Press a single button, at any time, and you'll see the other side of reality: a green and violent dimension that's filled with strange creatures and whirling tornadoes of energy. Just being in the shroud gives you options: floating above the ground are 'collectors' - fleshy heavy metal album cover worms that are scavenging electrical energy. Pop them, with a single rifle round, and they'll blast apart, damaging enemies in the real world. They are essentially exploding, hidden, organic barrels. ...In shroud mode, too, occult symbols etched into the masonry are transformed into holes in walls that BJ can simply step, shoot, or lob a grenade through."

Hawkeye: Who would name their kid B.J.?!B.J.: My mother, Bea Honeycutt, and my father, Jay Honeycutt.Hawkeye: Oh! Bea Jay! B.J.! You honestly expect me to belive that cockamamy story? Now what does it stand for?B.J.: Anything you want.

The ridiculous shroud thing sounds like something that should be reserved for more mystical games like doom, etc. Wolfenstein was cool in that there was no monsters, just human guards and german shepherds. Shroud sounds lame.

Never having played Spear of Destiny or Castle Wolfenstein past the first few levels, the whole paranormal thing threw me off in RTCW - it wasn't what I was looking forward to nor what I was expecting. To me, it was a disappointment.

It remembers me the "Scrye" view which was present in Undying. In my opinion, the implementation was brillant - every part of the game could have a regular and flip side - but it was underused and ultimately just a gimmick. I think it is a very interesting move to have something like this in the next Wolfenstein - we'll just have to see how it turns out to be.

I wouldn't call it a gimmick -- I always used scrye as a flashlight. Of course, I can see how you would think it wasteful if you only used it when the game prompted you to. God, just thinking about that game still gives me the creeps.

Actually, the original was a purely 2D game for 8-bit machines. Wolf3D was based (loosely) on this. Possibly the grandparent thinks Return to Castle Wolfenstein was the original. It had great gameplay - lots of running and shooting monsters that died in large numbers. Lots of variation between levels (from running and spraying the area with fire to sitting in a hole sniping at large numbers of people, and just enough of a story to be interesting, without being a major element. Very much like Half Life in that respect (I don't want a lot of plot in FPS games - for good plots I can read a book - just enough so the shooting doesn't get boring).

Wait, which "original" Wolfenstein gameplay are we talking about? RTCW-ET (Return to Castle Wolfenstien, Enemy Territory), the latest one of the series, if you don't include ET4-Quake Wars, is *still* one of the best gameplays out there.

Multiple Character classes (Soldier, Medic, Engineer, Field Ops, Covert Ops)
Each class with its own set of weapons and abilities
Multiple classes needed to complete any given map (which makes online multi-player gameplay actually compelling)
All of which creates the need to coordinate with strangers over the internet in real time to be able to win...

There is nothing like going covert-op, grabbing a uniform, and taking an engineer with you through the tunnel to blow the Fuel Dump while everyone else is still trying to construct the bridge and move the tank. It's better than sex (not that I know what sex is, being on Slashdot and all...). In any case, it's nothing like a generic shooter, it's nothing like identical looking mazes.

Not to mention it was NOT a shooter, which Wolfenstein 3D and onward were - it is considered the first action/stealth game. Beyond Castle Wolfenstein even let you drag corpses around.

Castle Wolfenstein was also one of the first games to have a major mod, Castle Smurfenstein, by Dead Smurf Software. I enjoyed that one better than Dino Smurfs (a mod on Dino Eggs, which was not my favorite game to begin with - I loved Wolf and hate those little blue bastards).

I understand that the Wolfenstein series et al. has never been about realism in the strict sense. C'mon, you can take ten bullets to the face and still shoot perfectly until you drop dead...

All the same, this does sound a little ridiculous. I realize that the Wolfenstein series has never been all that grounded in reality save the connection to the Nazis (see -- mecha Hitler, zombie things?), but really? Then again, it might give a nice shot in the arm to the vanilla WWII realism shooters... but I don't hold

Think of Wolfenstein once id gets a hold of it less as a forerunner or relative to realistic WWII shooters, and more like a video game equivalent of bad fifties and sixties pulps about those shooters (since the original games were pretty much pure jail-break stuff.) Wolf 3-D was pretty much exactly that, replete with the occult stuff, Mecha-Hitler, etc. (Keep in mind Wolf3D had gun-chested zombies!) Newer sequels can be thought of as evolving in parallel by reproducing more modern, serious, and perhaps sorta conspiracy theory-ish interpretations about what the Nazis did or thought they were planning on doing. I guess the genre could be called Nazi Sci-Fi/Fantasy or something.

About Wolfenstein, it's best to just consider it a alternate reality WWII shooter, I don't think the game ever really took itself seriously so why should we, and that is where half the fun is.

Also it seems like FPS's in general have been trying more and more to make us use an extra-dimensional elements, PREY's spirit form and 'shroud'. What else could developers do to expand on the game play without overwhelming players? Any ideas?

I don't know what it is with ID and their terrible 'revive our old games' thing.

Seriously, good as the engine was, doom 3 was a bad game, it lacked much of the gameplay associated with the original games. Obviously things had moved on in many ways, but it played more like an AvP knockoff to me, and not a well designed one at that.

Quake 4 was also pretty poor. There wasn't much to wolfenstein, so they can pretty much start from scratch and go any way they like. Looking at their recent track record in games sat atop their (undeniably excellent) engines, I won't be shelling out the pounds for this until its been around long enough to be cheap.

> I don't know what it is with ID and their terrible 'revive our old games' thing.

If they end up with more revivifications like RtCW than Doom 3 then the industry as a whole benefits from it. There should always be a Castle Wolfenstein game available on a fairly modern engine. RtCW is a little long in the tooth now, so let's have a new one. Works for me, I loved RtCW and there are damned few servers left whenever I reinstall.

Id's "first party" games are just tech demos for their latest engine anyway, have been for a while. That explains Doom 3 right there - they really weren't trying to make an awesome game, they were demoing an awesome engine.

Waiting until games become cheap is an excellent strategy. If it's any good, there will still be a healthy online community. If there isn't, you didn't miss much.

I don't understand why everybody says Doom 3 was a 'demo'. It was not. It was an awesome game. Highly entertaining, as it kept the player on the edge with different events, an awesome atmosphere, amazing environments, high adrenaline etc.

It's been an idea of mine for a while now that id should make game engines to license to other developers. Much like unreal does most of the time. Most of unreal's own games are pretty crappy (personal opinion) but they sell their engine to some great games (bioshock etc). If id did this their engines could be used to make far better games then they can in house, and probably make more money to boot.

D3 was never frantic enough. Painkiller and the Serious Sam games were much, much more faithful to the original Doom formula. D3 tried to be the original (reason's out the window, monster closets everywhere) while trying for a more modern, atmospheric scariness (booooo, it's all dark, you're afraid!) and placing greater emphasis on the story (hey, look, audio logs!)

IMO, they failed to do any of that well. Too few enemies for a classic Doom feel, too predictable for a creepier kind of fright, and the adde

Doom was one part Aliens, two parts Evil Dead. Doom's maps were in large part very explorable, with many dead ends and interesting level design situations that didn't ever make any architectural sense but played interestingly. The monsters were dumb, but they were very distinct and dozens could be on the screen at any given time, and even the dumbest monsters placed in the right kinds of situations could create interesting combat 'puzzles' for the pl

doom 3 was a bad game, it lacked much of the gameplay associated with the original games.I think that your expectations are out of whack. If you'd never seen either before, you'd rate Doom 3 as way better than Doom. And with so few first-person games around, Doom was pretty impressive. But now, game makers need to do more to distinguish their efforts from the other titles.

Personally, I rate Doom I as the better game because it calls for more imagination to be invested in playing the game. That's where t

I have to agree,AvP 1 and 2 for the PC were WAY more scary than Doom 3. Especially how the space marines had the tracking device like in Aliens? I would hear that "ping....ping..ping.ping.PING!" and I could hear Bill Paxton calling out the meters in my head. Great game. I wish we would get more games like THAT,instead of "Oh look,a dark corridor I can't see through,and I am as stupid as the little blonde girl in a slasher flick and don't have a decent flashlight. A monster will attack in 3.2.1.." Very predi

Shrouding into occult dimensions, really? Let me guess, the market is saturated with WWII shooters which are all a variation of the same thing, the same weapons, with the same game modes, and they really don't know what to invent anymore to do something even a bit different?

Well the problem is not that they use the occult to make cool monster or story plots, but that they use it as a pretext to bring something new to the gameplay. Basically it says "It's so much of the same old "over there a nazi! shoot!!" shit that we had to come up with those alternate dimensions shit to make the gameplay stand out a bit". Kind of like eating the same soup you've ate for the past 15 years except this time adding a pinch of weird tasting herbs to it.

Well if you want to me a miserable shit about it most every game is retread of the same ideals that have been invented well over a decade ago.;)

Wolf 3D's sequel did cover the occult. While Wolf 3D didn't have zombies it had a robot Hitler amongst other things that are more outrageous than a zombie so you can't really call it a serious game or act as if it's something new when this version of Wolfenstein comes up with something "outrageous" compared to the likes of Battlefield 1942.

I could reply to this comment by copying the comment you're replying to, meaning I feel that you missed my point. It's all about the gameplay, that is, what you actually do. In Wolf3D you just shoot guns, open doors, collect items and use FAKs. The monsters' backstory doesn't really matter much, but it matters when you introduce some bullshit about occult dimensions to make up for a lackluster gameplay.

Hmmm...I dunno, while I like Connery and Indy, I'm on the fence with 'The Last Crusade'. Plus, it's been awhile but did Temple of Doom have Nazis? That wasn't that bad. It was better than 'The Last Crusade' imo.

I might have to watch my box set again. That's not a bad way to end the week.

Well, I for one, have been faithful to Castle Wolfenstein, since it's Apple ][ debut. Yes, you guys think Castle Wolfenstein on the PC, I used to play it when it was really and I mean REALLY, 2d, maze like. It's gone a long way.

I don't want wolfenstein to be based on realism, in fact, the more Hitler/Nazis/Occult/Weird Science/Monsters we get, the better it is.

And of course, that BJ finds new types of weapons and defences based on what the enemy has been unearthing, researching, etc..., I love it!

I just hope the keep and improve on the multiplayer aspect of the game. It was the best part and why I loved the game and particularly why I played it for so long. It really gave the game long lasting legs on which to stand.

I hope the take note of Enemy Territory and the team based multiplayer. Quake Wars is good, but I remember ET was the best.

Wolfenstein used to have a simple and timeless premise: a Polish-Jewish supersoldier invades a Nazi stronghold and singlehandedly defeats everyone whose path he crossed, including a cyborg Hitler with rail guns for arms.

I don't see why they had to go and complicate the story with "shrouding" and "occult portals" and whatnot.

Anyone else think that the shroud mode sounds a lot like the spirit mode in Prey? Especially the part about symbols on the wall changing into things when you go into shroud mode.

Its way older than that. Prey only came out fairly recently. There was a vampire game, one of the legacy of Kain series from 1999 http://www.dark-chronicle.co.uk/sr1/index.php?id=2 [dark-chronicle.co.uk] I think. Perhaps even earlier implementations of shroud/spirit/reality shift etc. And I'm sure there are movies with this plot device too that pre-date even that.Even Zelda on the Wii has this switching realms thing as a plot device. Pretty cheap to do too. change the lighting, put different texture maps on the models and characters, and you have double the gameplay with less effort. Put a switch to remove collision detection on the enemies in one ream, and you can even do things like walking through people when travelling in the ghost mode.

There is no reason to not use such a plot device. After all, a FPS is a FPS. The details and setting may change, but when it comes down to it, shoot the monsters, pull the switches, collect the tokens, and move on to bigger better monsters and weapons... and repeat on new map. Is there really any FPS that deviates much from this? Its a well tested successful format for a game, People like it, the engines, once created can be used to make more similar games, and making third party maps and mods is a well established shelf life extender.

Well, blame the dumbshit gamers who keep making it profitable for ID/Raven to pump out the same derivative shit over and over and over and over again.

Other than the "style" in which this was written, why is this marked "Troll"?!? The person is right. It's the same thing over and over coming out of the gaming industry.

That said, would I buy another Wolf3d? Yea, probably. I bought the original and the "addon" 5 missions (I never did get Spear of Destiny, though), then Doom, then Doom2, RTCW, Doom3, etc. I've rather liked id's work from the very start. Doom3 was a rocky start [slashdot.org], but it's OK these days. I guess it's not "ground breaking", but it's a departure from the norm.

I guess that's the best we can hope for these days; a departure from the norm.:\

Well, blame the dumbshit gamers who keep making it profitable for ID/Raven to pump out the same derivative shit over and over and over and over again.

Part of it is also they don't need to spend as much advertising it because word will spread just because its Doom X, RTCW X, Quake X. Secondly as a gamer series tends to reuse some code so hopefully (stressing hopefully) you will be purchasing a less buggy game that typically will have a decent (and reused) interface.

Much of the fault lies with gamers for the lack of original games. If people stopped buying all the uninspired carbon copied lousy first person shooters that game companies are destroying the industry with, game companies would have to put their efforts into making original fun games. However, as long as people keep lining up at midnight just to be the first to buy games like Halo 3 it'll never happen.